RIGHT TO QUIRKS, INTERVENTION HANG IN FINE BALANCE

On Wednesday morning, students at high schools across the Chicago area were greeted by announcements related to the Colorado shootings, ranging from assurances that their own schools were safe to pleas for greater tolerance of fellow students and offers of counseling.

In a few classrooms, teachers discarded lesson plans and allowed students to use the period to discuss the tragedy.

While concern over nuts-and-bolts security was on administrators' minds, students and officials said the best measure for preventing such school violence is to address the social climate among students to ensure that kids who consider themselves misfits don't become so alienated that they contemplate violent retaliation.

Cliques of youngsters who unite out of a sense of isolation or of being picked on, whether adopting the black-wearing Goth look or other attention-getting devices, are a familiar phenomenon at city and suburban schools.

"Some of these kids who dress in black have been abused by other kids at school for years. They spend their whole lives as outcasts," said 17-year-old Sarah Bussey of Mt. Prospect, a junior at Hersey High School in Arlington Heights.

The social misfit has long been a subject of literature, movies and the media, but experts who treat adolescent behavior disorders say the notion that such kids would react by targeting an entire school might involve an incendiary mix of factors peculiar to contemporary society.

Those could include untreated neurological problems coupled with easy access to guns, immersion in violent pop culture and a less-authoritarian adult culture.

Referring to reports from Colorado that students knew the gun-wielding students were disturbed but school officials did not, administrators in the Chicago area emphasized that students must come forward if they know their peers are spinning out of control.

"We have to break through those old codes of silence," said Griff Powell, superintendent of Niles Township High School District 219. "It's ingrained in our culture that you don't tell on people, and that has to be changed."

David Eblen, superintendent of Community High School District 99 in Downers Grove, said it is difficult for administrators to identify dangerous cliques by clothing or mannerisms alone.

"That's a fine line we walk, because it is a public institution," he said. "There are freedoms and rights people have.

"Both of our schools have done a lot with the issue of civility--that we need to return to a higher level of civility. Tolerance, diversity, respect for different people. We need to appreciate that and not belittle others."

Psychologists who treat violent behavior in adolescents said certain warning signs should not be ignored.

Some students suffer from a chemical imbalance that, combined with environmental factors, can lead to lethal consequences, said Bill Walsh, a biochemist and founder of the Pfeiffer Treatment Center, a not-for-profit center that treats people with behavioral disorders.

He identified two types of youngsters with behavioral problems: "There are those who are hell on wheels from the beginning, from the time they are 2 or 3 years old. . . . They lie, steal, are opposed to authority and torture animals. They're very dangerous."

It is more likely, he said, that the Littleton students fit another description: "The kids who float through until they are teenagers and then things head downhill. The warning signs for them are isolation from family, withdrawal from family, spending a lot of time in their room alone, sleep disorders, change in activities, dress.

"What you need to do is identify the at-risk children and give them effective treatment early."

The teenagers spending their lunch hour at Nikko's restaurant in Arlington Heights on Wednesday were eager to talk about the tragedy in Colorado.

"There are a couple of kids at Hersey that are into wearing all black, but I think it's just a stage," said Mt. Prospect resident Cathy Klimcz, 15, a sophomore at Hersey. "They find a group that dresses alike to get attention."

Tony Colello, 19, is a freshman at Oakton Community College in Des Plaines, where Gothic culture is nonexistent. But the Arlington Heights resident recalled the Goths from his days at Prospect High School, where the student newspaper interviewed teens with a passion for dark clothing and white face makeup with black eyeliner and lipstick.

Colello said the teenagers attracted to Goth style usually had been ostracized for years and seemed to find comfort and strength in establishing an identity that appeared dangerous.

"They were really harmless. They didn't destroy school property or anything," he said. "I think a lot of them have problems at home with their families. Their parents aren't paying enough attention to them."

Outside a Taco Bell in Hoffman Estates, six students said their pierced eyebrows, bluish hair and hip-hop clothes have earned them the badge among peers at Hoffman Estates High School of "freaks." They prefer to think of themselves as "heavy kids." Or better yet, "individuals."

Tim Wittenborn, a 17-year-old junior in a black bomber jacket and a backward cap, called the shootings a tragedy but said he could imagine the frustration felt by the suicidal gunmen. To dress eclectically or to have offbeat taste in hair, clothes or music is to invite ostracization, he said.

"I would never do something like that," he said of Tuesday's shootings. "But I can understand why they might feel that way."

Jack Elliott, principal at Rolling Meadows High School, said he is unaware of any Goth cliques there. But he said that if a contingent of teens started dressing alike--for example, in black trench coats embellished with swastikas--the students' parents would be called and the situation would be treated as a "gang problem."

"Displaying a swastika would be considered offensive according to our dress code," Elliott said. "We had some students wearing Confederate flags awhile back, and we asked them not to."

Elliott said teachers at the high school work with teen peer mediators, who help defuse potentially volatile situations, including those involving a youth who is being bullied by his peers.

At Evanston Township High School District 202, officials have a program that sends angry kids into counseling. Students who act violently or who get into fights at school are referred to an anger-management program along with their families. The program is offered as an alternative to being suspended.

At New Trier Township High School District 203, school officials spent much of the day reviewing security procedures and making sure that students and faculty were offered emotional support.

Regarding the importance of identifying troubled students, New Trier Supt. Henry Bangser said, "When an adolescent or older teenager utters words like, `I'm going to kill this person,' you take it seriously and report that to people who can deal with it."

In an effort to make sure that students know whom to talk to, New Trier has an advisory system in which students report to a single adviser throughout high school. It's not only an academic relationship but also a personal one, he said.

"For this kind of an issue we feel that we have as good a chance as anybody to recognize if a young boy or girl" is in trouble, he said.

At Whitney Young High School in Chicago on Wednesday, Vanessa Abron, 17, reflected, "For the most part, I do feel safe at school. Pretty much my school has a firm grasp on security. We have police on staff at school as well.

"I might be going through this thing (thinking) that it can't happen to me. But those students (in Littleton) thought the same thing."